Running mecha - how fast?

You need go to go to sleep, and I think you may be drunk. You can't come up with a magical formula for height to speed. Humans aren't equal to each other in speed. Mechs will be even more disproportionate.

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>>14992576

Well, naturally there will be differences. Aside from the variance between different humans, there's technology and design to take into account with mecha.

Some mecha are clunky and creaky and sluggish; some are mind-bogglingly agile; hell, some are shaped like lions and cheetahs and such.

Still, I wonder what kind of conclusions we can draw from what we've seen...

>>14992549
Im pretty sure the Evas break the sound barrier

>>14992631
>break the sound barrier

When RUNNING?!?

>>14992646
Eva-01 did form one of those vapour cones that's typically associated with supersonic aircraft. It's not _strictly_ from doing that, but that's probably what they were going for.

Square-cube law's gonna fuck with even semi-realistic attempts to stat stuff like this out.

You're gonna have to take into account the surface material being run on too.

>>14992549
Thinking about it, I have never seen a mech run, other than God Gundam in Gundam Musou 3. Mechs always boost when going fast.

>>14992549
Mazinger Z running (just now I noticed that it's a Naruto-type run when it gets to full speed!). Couldn't find a better video.

https://youtu.be/nYiGlm1-gYo?t=1m2s

In the previous episode, it even broke from Kouji forcing it so much and running out of power in the middle of it.

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Translating into reality, I don't expect mecha to run very quickly. Even modern human-scale attempts at humanoid robots are lucky to walk in a balanced, controlled manner. Sure, given enough time and research, we could make a robot that runs at the same pace as a human, but we're making better strides with quadrupedal designs, which are more stable.

Basically, if we continue down the current path of robotics development, and then scale that up, we're more likely to end up with Zoids than Mobile Suits.

>>14992803
>Hundreds of years into the future zoids are used as tools of war over colony resources
>One crazy man designs a Gundam based off of what little anime that survived being passed down in his family
>In its first battle it mounts a zoid and unknowingly starts a new arms race over mounted mech battles.

>>14992772
FMP's mechs run reasonably often.

>>14992549
It kind of depends on BS stats though. Mazinger Z running would run much faster than any MS of the same size running for example.

>>14992792
>Mazinger flies on robo tits

>>14992646
AT fields are bullshit, this isn't new.

The tech all comes down to power. Take the mass of a Mech and figure out the force needed to bring that mass into what you consider fast. Then find the force required to stop that mass "fast." Power is force exerted times time so the time it takes to be "fast" times the force required to be "fast.". Find a power plant that can output the power and a motor that can exert the power and you will have found your answer for a single jointed robot.

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>>14992772
>Mechs always boost when going fast.

I've noticed this too. I think it's a function of the fact that animating walking is a serious pain in the ass. As Lucas Gray (animator for The Simpsons and Family Guy) says,

"South Park is able to get away with such a short turnaround because their characters don't walk -- they hop around with no animation ... and overall there is very little actual animation between poses. It works because they designed the show around that aesthetic, but The Simpsons and Family Guy need a lot more drawing for every second of screen time."

"I try to hide the feet as much as possible," says Lucas, "because you can draw a character walking from the knees up no problem. But when the feet are touching the ground you really have to plan that very carefully. It takes a lot of pencil mileage and 'unnecessary shoe leather.' Don't show feet on the ground unless you absolutely have to."

Boosting or skating around really takes that complication out of the equation.

Fast like really fucking fast dude I'm talking super fast, holy shit.

>>14992948
The episode is fucking great.
Watch Mazinger already. You have your choice of crabsticks, FUCKING SUBs, and actual English. Ninety two episodes and movies, no excuses.

>>14992755
>Square-cube law

Yeah, the said law that its own relevance has been revoted and debated for years due to existance of dinosaurs and 15m+ Quarry diggers has been build without problems.

Seriously those law can be deflected by strong enought composite and supportive design, don't overated it.

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If the average human running speed is about 15mph, then I should think that once could just increase that based on the size of the mecha in question.

Assuming the mech is shaped like a human and moves like a human, and has the same responses as a human, the increase in size would be the increase in running speed.

Sprinting speed for the average human is about 15mph. Let's call it 18mph for simplicity, as your average human is about 1.8m tall. That's 10mph per meter of height.

So then, your average mobile suit (18m) might be able to run 180mph.

A VF-1 valkyrie (12.68m height) could run at about 127mph.

Evangelions, standing around 80m tall, could run 800mph -- which, in fact, is faster than the sound barrier.

>>14993133
This is like that stupid thing about bumblebee flight being impossible.

The square-cube law is not wrong, nor has it ever been irrelevant. It is a comparative meaning that the same solutions do not work as well at different scales, not that no solution exists.

>>14993169
Yeah, it was no solution if you just simply resize a man and called it viable mech, you'll need to calculate all the support design, proportion and the exac composite needed to make things work.

So its not that it was deliberately not viable, it was just not that simple.

>>14993155
Its... not that simple, you must put all the tonnage mass and gravity stress into calculation, so it might be a diminishing return for every meters at certain points.

And knowing that you must readjust the whole upper and lower body proportion (assuming it was bipedal) due to bigger=need stronger support, or things just simply fell apart. So i think that things like evangelion will be very sluggish or there was some bizarro material or space magic involved.

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>>14993238

Well, in the case of Evas, yeah, there is indeed bizarro space magic.

But then there's Gipsy Danger and the other Jaegers from Pacific Rim. They're also 80m tall. While they're definitely not running 800mph, they are definitely able to run faster than a human. Hell, they WALK faster than humans run, without a doubt.

I agree that there would be diminishing returns. That's what I'm trying to figure out.

We have to keep in mind that in anime, the physics of giant mecha are handwaved -- whatever they're made of, whatever they weigh, they work. And of course the standards of size, speed, mass, strength, and everything else varies from show to show.

If you don't think a linear progression is the right fit (I tend to agree with you), what kind of progression do you think would make more sense?

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In the Zoids Chaotic Century anime, couldn't the Lightning Saix break the sound barrier when it ran at full speed?

>>14993262
Jaegers were never really intended to run though. In most cases they were air-deployed, because that was the fastest way to get them close to the Breach. To my knowledge, the only non-air deployment of a Jaeger was when they used a NASA crawler to sortee Gipsy Danger during the Anchorage attack. And the crawler isn't exactly known for being fast, either.

Jaegers are good at defense. Not so much pursuit. I imagine that if a Kaiju ever just decided to run away from a Jaeger, there would be no possibility of pursuit, and they'd have to nuke it ala San Fransisco.

Striker Eureka was the fastest Jaeger they had, and was top of the line, and even then, it jobbed.

>>14993305

Yeah but those giant robits striding through the ocean was pure awesome

>>14993262
>If you don't think a linear progression is the right fit (I tend to agree with you), what kind of progression do you think would make more sense?

The progression of material developement will be more in sense for me. A more advance material will shape the mech efficiency to the better ways.

Or progression in finding a "sweet" spot between mecha engines, tonnage, design, and materiel really.

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I particularly like Temjin's running animation in the Virtual On games. His thrusters are angled upwards so they provide additional downforce. Much like the aerofoils on F1 racers, this generates more friction = greater speeds. It's essentially some sort of boosted running.


https://youtu.be/2N_EjMw0z8g
https://youtu.be/bM7rNO0j4t4

>>14993387

Wow. I didn't think I'd enjoy seeing Virtualoids in SRW, but that was really fun.

>>14993387
Given a rough ballpark value for weight, even some light mechs weigh in in the tens of tons. With that much mass, I don't see downforce as something you need. Arguably, I'd say you need the opposite. The motion of legs, and the motion of wheels are entirely mechanically different as well.

On a car, additional downforce helps improve grip, which in turn increases the amount of energy the wheels can transfer to the ground, allowing you to get more acceleration out of the same amount of power. It also helps that wheels don't actually have to leave the ground to do their work. They're always putting power to the ground.

On the otherhand, legs DO need to leave the ground in order to do work in propelling you forward. That power is transferred to the ground as you bring your foot down, increases as you shift your weight to that foot to bring your other foot forward, then decreases as your other foot makes contact to begin the cycle all over again.

Now, I'm not a runner or an athlete, so I can't say for sure, but I'm sure that you only want to put power to the ground when you need to move your other leg forward. If that's the case, you'll want something that can provide the thrust to speed up the time it takes to shift weight off your foot. Your mass can do the work of shifting weight onto it for you.

So I DO see thruster-aided running as viable, but you'd want them angled up and slightly forward, to provide lift as well as momentum. You might also want two sets of thrusters, one on each side of the body, alternating their thrust output based on the run/walk cycle.

How about you just add the size (height or length or whatever) as number to the normal running speed of a particular configuration?

Again, a typical human (1.8m) can run around 15mph.

Then maybe the base running speed is 13mph, and you add the size of the mech in question, 1mph per meter.

Yes, this is totally arbitrary, I know. But I shouldn't mix metric and imperial, so let's try Meters per Second.

An average 1.8m human runs at an average of 6.7m/sec (15mph). Call that 7m/second for 2m of height, to make things easy... so then, 1m/sec for each meter of height, added to a base of 5m/sec. In that case...

An 18m tall Mobile Suit could run 23m/sec (51mph);

Your VF-1 valkyrie (12.68m height) could run 17.68m/sec (about 40mph);

Gipsy Danger, at 80m tall, could run 85m/sec, or 190mph.

Hmmm. That's not too bad.

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I wonder how fast each iteration of Gurren Lagann could run.

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_mfsGD7HwpY
Found this.

Big robots have far more inertia then a human being.

Also wear your Gundam seatbelts kids
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dWObQ3FX_do

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>>14992815
>You'll never live to see this

Feelsbad

>>14993442
Funnily enough, they DID give values for ground running speed for some MSG suits. RX-78-2 has a maximum ground running speed of 205 km/h apparently. But then again, its weight is just from average weight of a human multiplied to 18 meters, so...

>>14993478

Oh god the horror, the humanity

>>14993478

That was fucking amazing. Thank you Japan.

>>14993516
>205 km/h

That's 127mph, which is sorta in the vicinity of here >>14993155
>your average mobile suit (18m) might be able to run 180mph.
>A VF-1 valkyrie (12.68m height) could run at about 127mph.

Rather than here >>14993442
>An 18m tall Mobile Suit could run 23m/sec (51mph);
>Your VF-1 valkyrie (12.68m height) could run 17.68m/sec (about 40mph);

But like you said, it's supposedly just human speed scaled up. Interesting. I wonder how exactly they arrived at that 205kph number?

Usain Bolt, Olympic gold sprinter, did 27.7mph (44.6kph). Scientists theorize people might be able to hit 40mph (64.4kph).

205kph/44.6kph = 4.6.

Hmmm. Now I REALLY wonder where they got their numbers from.

>/m/ maths and science thread

I love this. My pants are off.

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>>14993605
>turned on by /m/ caluclations

OK, dig this then:

>>14993551
Gundam (18m) is 10x the size of a person (1.8m).

Maximum running speed of Gundam (205kph) is roughly 3.18x the theoretical maximum human sprint (64.4kph).

The square root of 10 is roughly 3.16.
COINCIDENCE???
I don't believe in such things.

If we use the square root of the size difference as the multiplier for running speed, we get:

Valkyrie (12.68m) sprint maximum = 171kph (106mph)

Eva (80m) sprint maximum = 429kph (266mph)

That's not bad.

>>14992549
I think DaiGuard covered this concept best. The immense stride of a mech would make running reach rather high speeds, but it's a terrible experience for everyone involved. It requires perfect piloting, good terrain, constant calculations, and even then it won't be able to run like a human and would end up moving it's legs much slower than a human running. It also would make the pilot(s) lives hell because it would put then through absolutely horrid turbulence which inhibits their abilities and further limits the running speed of the mech.

I would say it's fast, but not quite a H-HAYAI!

>>14994085

That's definitely a more realistic approach to the subject, which was Dai-Guard's whole schtick and what made it fun.

However, most anime mecha don't really worry about realism all that much. As seen in the GIFs posted here:
>>14993155
>>14992549
Evas, at least, can run like a motherfucker. But generally, I would agree with your assessment >>14994085:
>I would say it's fast, but not quite a H-HAYAI!

>>14994575

Speaking of "fast, but not hayai!"...

According to the Gundam wiki (not the most consistently reliable source, I know), the Gundam runs not at 205km/h, but 165 km/h.

AFAIK, the original, first Gundam series was the only one to give ground speeds for the MSs (along with some of the first MSVs). Here's a list:

Gasshia: 55 km/h
Zaku I: 65 km/h
Guncannon Heavy Arms Type: 69 km/h
Guntank: 70 km/h
Zaku Cannon: 73km/h
Guntank II: 75km/h
Zaku Desert Type: 80 km/h
Acguy: 80 km/h (land), 53 knots (water)
GM Cannon: 83 km/h
Zaku II J: 85 km/h
Zaku II F: 88 km/h
Gigan: 90 km/h
Dom: 90 km/h (240 km/h hover)
Gyan: 95 km/h
Gouf: 99 km/h
GM: 102 km/h
Rick Dom: 110 km/h
Gundam: 165 km/h
Gelgoog: 180 km/h

Zaku Marine Type: 45 knots
Agguguy: 50 knots
Juagg: 55 knots
Gogg: 75 knots
Z'Gok: 102 knots

Nothing in the list gets to that 205 km/h mark, but we all know that the MSs get more and more advanced as the U.C. moves on. Still, it's interesting to note that these figures aren't all THAT high. I mean, 180 km/h is 111mph -- a good car can go faster than that. And the Zaku's max run is a mere 54mph.

Also worth noting: the VF-1 Valkyrie's official running speed is 160 km/h, barely slower than the RX-78.

bumperz